2014 Goals

Greetings!

Welcome to theFIREstarter! If you are interested in themes such as Financial Independence, Retiring Early, Downshifting, or simply just working less and living more then please stick around, I think we’ll get on just fine 🙂

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My thoughts and plans have slightly changed in the few years since I set up the blog, you can learn a little bit more about me and the main points on what those plans were and how they've changed here, here, here, here and finally here.

If you'd like to keep a track of new developments, money saving tips, money making tips, my adventures in attempting self sufficiency and simple living, free financial hacks and spreadsheets, and my general musings on Financial Independence, Personal Finance, investing, and the occasional humorous rant, then please consider following along. Those links again:

Financial Task: Set up a SIPP account to save pre-tax £££’s into – Failed!

Financial Task: Set up an ISA in Mrs TFS’s name and use it to invest in Vanguard funds – Completed. Post coming soon!

Task: Buy a new (used!) car to increase fuel efficiency (MPG), and sell the old one. – Completed! Read the post about it here

February

Challenge: Run 2 half marathons (already booked in so I have to do this really!) – Completed! – Ran the Brighton Half Marathon in 1:34:54 – a personal best! And the Tunbridge Wells Half Marathon in 1:39:46. So maybe my strange training schedule throughout January did pay dividends in the end! 🙂

Financial: Research alternative methods of investing available to UK investors, and invest if possible. Completed. Did a fair bit of research on this front but as always with these things it is an on-going process.

Environmental: Energy efficiency in the home. Test all devices, make necessary changes. Completed. Bought and installed some LED lights so all our bulbs are now energy saving.

Task: Sell rest of stuff from de-cluttering project, and have a reassessment. Completed. We have been selling stuff on E-Bay and also had a car boot sale (in March, so a little late finishing this project off. Again these things tend to be on-going!)

March

Financial Education: Learn how to submit a tax form, for the purposes of having “side hustle” income. Failed! Just haven’t had the time this month! Plus I haven’t had any side hustle income yet 🙁 so ultimately I haven’t had the motivation to get this one done.

Financial Task: Open some new credit cards to start “Travel hacking” – hopefully I can pay for a holiday in 2015 with air miles. Failed! I looked into it and decided that Avios points are actually a bit of a crap deal. Post coming up about this soon!

Education: Start reading a book! Completed-ish. I started reading Guns, Germs and Steel but only got about half way through before I had to get it back to the library as someone had already resevered it. I re-reserved it so will carry on when available again! (It was pretty good so far!)

Financial Goal: Start “Maxing out” both of our ISA allowances which equates to putting around £2000 a month into them jointly

Finanicial Task: As it will be the new tax year, set up a new ISA in my name which uses Vanguard funds only and work out an optimum asset allocation strategy.

Challenge: Complete a 30 day “no added sugar” food challenge

Other: Celebrate Mrs TFS’s 30th birthday in style, but on a budget (am I allowed to put that? Oh well too late!)

June

Financial Education: Learn more about real estate investing – Research the local market intensively to see if a local rental property would be viable, and if not see if buying a property somewhere else in England would work.

Blog Milestone: 20,000 page views per month

Other: Celebrate my 33rd birthday. Eek!

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Thanks Derek… I’ve read a bit about juicing and it sounds interesting. The thing is I’m a skinny git already so would be worried about becoming stick thin if I tried it!
It makes sense to track your numbers whether privately or publicly, the J Money post you linked to actually inspired me to publish so all credit goes to him really!

Hats off to a Brit who is open enough to put their net worth “out there”. It’s not a typically British behaviour so well done.

I always exclude house price appreciation when looking at (our) net worth myself as it’s mostly impossible to ever realise the number…. you have to live somewhere, & on average other places are going up in cost at the same rate as your own place. Investment properties I would include (if i had one!), as that appreciation could be liquidated (albeit with some costs).

It looks like our house will be “worth” half a million by the end of the year, & we’ve got under 100K on the mortgage, but that 400K equity is not available to me: Mrs LCIL & I have no intention to move somewhere with cheaper housing stock, & we cannot move in the local area without hideous cost implications (stamp duty etc). Staying put is actually the cheapest option!

You are right about that, we are much more cagey about our finances than other nations I feel.

I totally get what you are saying about excluding your house value in your Net Worth, and especially if you never plan to move or sell to release the equity. However I don’t think it is fair to argue that it counts for nowt, and I will be talking about this in my very next post on how to calculate your Net Worth in fact, so keep your eyes peeled for it 🙂

well, it’s certainly not worth nowt… it’s worth the very least the difference in cost between renting & owning over the duration of your time in the property (in the short term this being a negative number).

& there are of course costs in owning: repairs etc, but there are less financial benefits too (changing home to own tastes, not beholden to rent increases & shoddy repairs)

Hi Laura!
Great to meet you too! I am slowly compiling a list of UK blogs now, it is much bigger than I first thought which is brilliant.
I see you are currently top of the “GBP” sub-list – congrats on that 🙂

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I am not a professional anything, and you should treat all the words you read on this site as ones that exist for your infotainment only. Even the ones in this disclaimer. I will not be held responsible for any kind of outcome from you following the advice or hint of a suggestion made on this blog, and will not be liable for any emotional damage inflicted by the stinkingly bad puns contained within. Read at your own risk. Some of the links on this website may be affiliate links, if you support me via these links I will be forever in your debt, not in any monetary sense of course. Like I'd actually put that in the disclaimer! Hah!